


An Uncertain Alliance

by cthulhu_has_chaotic_stories (cthulhu_is_chaotic_good)



Category: Alex Rider - Anthony Horowitz, Alex Rider - Fandom
Genre: Gen, Mission Fic, The Team-Up Everyone Wanted, of a sort
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-06
Updated: 2021-03-14
Packaged: 2021-03-17 09:16:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 10,729
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28597578
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cthulhu_is_chaotic_good/pseuds/cthulhu_has_chaotic_stories
Summary: The deal was simple: work for MI6 for five years, and then retire. The rest of the world would continue to believe that he was dead. Of course, Yassen Gregorovich had no intention of staying. Once certain objectives had been achieved, he intended to move on, even if it meant leaving a trail of bodies in his wake.Alex Rider, meanwhile, thought the plan of making Yassen his trainer and backup was a supremely ill-advised move on the part of his superiors.
Comments: 21
Kudos: 90





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> About two years ago, I started a story that got away from me, and I ended up deleting that. This is not that story, but it does borrow a bit from the setup (and one of its first scenes fairly word for word, so apologies if anyone had read a part of that story and recognizes the scene). 
> 
> My second apology is for starting a million stories at once. While the ideas don’t go away, and I’m a captive to their appeal, I do promise that I will finish them all.

Four Months Later

Oliver West looked at the student tied up in front of him, and couldn’t help the smile that spread across his face. “I was warned you were trouble.”

“I’m sometimes late to class, but isn’t this an overreaction?” The schoolboy inquired. “It’d be easier to give me detention.”

Oliver, lazily, strolled forward and slapped the boy. His head was knocked to the side, and then the boy grimaced and turned back to face him, the imprint of a palm already fading from his cheek.

The student was seemingly no less afraid than he had been a moment before. “Does South Africa still allow corporal punishment?”

“Private academies have their own rules,” Oliver said. “I would tell you more about them, as you clearly ignored orientation, but at this point it would be useless. As soon as I get answers from you, I plan to have you shot.” Oliver reached for his phone, and found the number for the newest member of his security team. He sent a short text to the number, only a few words: _Come to my office. There’s a problem._

The reply was immediate: _One minute._

Oliver took a seat on the edge of his desk again, examining his student. “You’re from London, that much is clear from your accent. Who are you with? MI6? The British always think they control the world.”

The boy was silent.

“It will help you if you talk now. But don’t worry. Even if you decide to stay silent, your silence won’t last long.”

“I’m not with anyone.”

“Of course not. It’s why the cameras told me you were rummaging through all of my files today, for the second time in two days.”

“People told me students were missing. I was curious.”

Oliver chuckled. “Curiosity does kill the cat, doesn’t it? But I rather think you’re a bit more than a curious delinquent. Especially when my sources told me to look out for a teenager. A teenager that looks suspiciously like you. I don’t suppose you’ve heard of a certain Alex Rider, have you?”

“No.”

“No,” Oliver repeated, amused. He would see how long that story lasted once the interrogation began. “No, I’m sure you haven’t.”

There was a knock on the door to his office.

“Sergei?” Oliver called. “If that’s you, come straight in.”

The door opened, and his guard - the blond, blue-eyed Russian who had joined Oliver’s operation only weeks before - walked in.

“Close the door behind you,” Oliver said. The guard did, and then stopped once he turned around and noted the teen tied to the chair in the middle of the room.

“Have you met Sergei?” Oliver asked the boy. “He’s been waiting for a chance for a proper test of loyalty, and lucky for you, you get to provide that test.” Oliver’s smile widened. “Sergei, you’re going to hurt the boy until I know everything about him and why he’s here, and then you’ll kill him. It’s no great matter; your resume speaks for itself. But the boy will be dead before you leave, or I’m afraid I may have a new vacancy on staff.”

“That can be arranged,” the guard said.

And then he pulled out a gun and shot Oliver dead.

There was a moment of silence as the guard turned to consider the schoolboy. Then the boy tied to the chair rolled his eyes. “Your solution to everything doesn’t have be ‘shoot it’, you know.”

“And you don’t have to be careless enough to be caught spying every five minutes,” Yassen Gregorovich responded. “Did you find what we needed?”

Alex Rider made a face. “Yes. Somewhat. But they’re not going to be happy about dealing with this mess, even if I know what happened to the missing kids. There had to be a solution besides killing the guy.”

“There was,” Yassen agreed. “I could have shot you and come back later for the rest of the information.”

“Ok. _Point_. Now can you untie me before someone finds us? Gunshots aren’t exactly subtle, you know.”

Yassen put the gun back into its holster, and pulled out a small knife. “Stay still,” he instructed, as he went to untie the spy. "We should leave quickly."

\--

Four Months Earlier

Yassen Gregorovich took a seat in front of the desk of the head of Special Operations of MI6. He knew who she was. They had met three times in the last year. The first two times were when Yassen had been held in what he believed to be the cells beneath MI6. The third time, she had visited him in the prison where he’d been held since MI6 had given up on interrogating him.

The first time, shortly after Yassen was taken out of the hospital and taken into MI6’s custody, he had been brought into the interrogation room where she had been waiting. Jones had pressed him particularly hard on what he had said to Alex Rider on Air Force One. Her irritation at his silence had been clear, and while Yassen hadn’t smiled, he’d felt the urge. Alex Rider, it seemed, had gone to find SCORPIA.

The second time Jones had visited him had been after what Yassen estimated was two weeks of particularly rough treatment at the hands of MI6’s interrogators. At that point he hadn’t been allowed a razor, and he’d had an unkempt beard. His clothes were not satisfactory for the temperature in his cell. Loud noises had been emitted from his walls to stop him from sleeping or thinking, the temperature had switched between just above freezing and just below burning, and every few hours guards came into the room, handcuffed Yassen, and dragged him into an interrogation room for a litany of questions. One of the last times he had arrived in the interrogation cell, Jones had been there. She asked him several of the usual questions about SCORPIA’s whereabouts, about who Yassen reported to within the organization for assignments, and about the directors of SCORPIA. Throughout it all, he didn’t speak.

And then she gave him the news.

Alex Rider had been shot.

She had pictures, and she had shown them to him.

Yassen’s expression had flickered, and he had known instantly that whatever coldness he was projecting had been damaged.

He still wouldn’t talk to Jones, or the interrogators, and after what seemed endless days, MI6’s rough treatment had stopped.

At least, in the times that he was alone in his cell, he had new information to turn over his head.

Jones had not told him about Alex’s condition due to kindness. Regardless, Yassen appreciated the news. It was better to know than to wonder. And even the brief bit of news she had shared told Yassen enough information to fill in certain blanks.

Alex Rider was still alive. The pictures she had were of the boy immediately post-surgery. And she had not declared the child _dead_ , only shot.

Alex had not stayed with SCORPIA. He was not handcuffed to his prison bed, as Yassen had been for the short while he was in the hospital instead of in the small prison’s tender care. Jones did not say ‘we shot him’, as she might have if the boy had continued his dalliance with the terrorist group that Yassen had aligned himself with for now 16 years.

The news that Alex had left SCORPIA was not as welcome as the news that Alex was alive.

Yassen knew that John had been working for MI6. And Alex had been raised by another spy for the agency. It was natural that the child should stay with what he knew. Yet Yassen had hoped that SCORPIA would teach the boy how to survive past the age of 14. Instead, he had been shot.

Yassen had decided to content himself with the fact that Alex was alive.

The third time that Jones had spoken to him had been no less interesting. It was late into his stay at the prison he had been transferred to, and he had been taken from the small cell where he spent most of his days alone and brought into a sterile room clearly intended for interviews and interrogations. Jones was already in the room. And she had brought a file.

As per their tradition by that point, Yassen waited without talking for the point of the meeting to be made clear.

“I imagine you’re tired of this place,” she had said, without preamble.

Yassen hadn’t replied. By this point his good behavior had earned him ‘rewards’ of books and magazines, and he had two hours of exercise time a day, carefully monitored. In his cell he had language books, newspapers, and other reading material, but he had been denied a television.

Saying that he was tired of this place would be an understatement.

“I would be as well,” she had continued, after it became clear that silence would be her only response. “Soon, you are going to be offered a deal. It would be in your best interest to have read everything in these papers, and be prepared to talk about them. Even if you refuse the deal I am prepared to make, perhaps another can be arranged.”

She had slid the file across the table to Yassen. He had taken it, holding it as well as he could with his hands cuffed in front of him. After a moment of silence, she had nodded curtly and departed.

And now Yassen Gregorovich was meeting Jones again, for a fourth time. Except this time the room was considerably nicer than the whitewashed walls of the interrogation rooms they had met in before. 

When Jones had said that he would be offered a deal, she hadn’t mentioned that it would be offered at the headquarters to MI6’s Department of Special Operations in London. Yassen hadn’t expected to be woken that day to be cuffed, and, with a bag over his head, loaded into a vehicle for transfer. After half a day of travel, however, he was almost certain that the office he was sitting in now was at the Royal & General.

As usual, the Director of Special Operations did not waste time with pleasantries. “Did you read the file I gave you?” Jones asked.

“Yes,” Yassen said. He had. Several times.

The news clippings of SCORPIA’s sudden near demise was a shock. The internal MI6 reports that attributed much of the organization’s downfall to a now 15-year-old boy would have been a much larger shock if Yassen had not met the boy in question.

“You know that your former employer is in no position to bargain for your release.”

“I would rather guess,” Yassen said, “That they don’t know I am alive to bargain for.”

“No,” Jones agreed. She reached for a peppermint. “As far as the world is concerned, Yassen Gregorovich is dead.”

That wasn’t a shock. Yassen had suspected that SCORPIA had thought as much when he’d been in the hospital.

That SCORPIA thought he was dead was no minor matter. If he escaped MI6’s custody, it meant he could enjoy retirement without problems. Of course, leaving MI6’s custody had not yet been anywhere close to a possibility.

Jones unwrapped her peppermint perfunctorily. “I am prepared to offer you a deal.”

Yassen examined his cuffed hands. He could break out of the handcuffs if he was prepared to break his thumbs. But the men with guns standing behind him would respond with force, and he would not have time to take them both out.

“How does five years of service with MI6 sound to you?”

It sounded, at the face of it, like a spectacularly bad idea on the part of MI6.

“And then?”

Jones popped the peppermint into her mouth. “And then you would be free, provided you don’t take up any work that would imperil Britain, MI6, or her operatives.”

“You think you can trust me to help MI6?”

Jones smiled, thinly. “Yes. I do.”

In the pause that followed, it was clear she intended Yassen to ask questions. He didn’t.

“The terms of the deal I am offering are strict,” she said. “For the first few months, you will work inside of headquarters during the week, and live in one of the apartments we host nearby. You will always have an armed guard with you. And if you do not meet or exceed the expectations that I set, the deal will be revoked. Obviously, if you make an unsuccessful attempt to flee, the deal will be revoked. And if you successfully flee, you will spend the rest of your short life fleeing the full force of MI6. But I do not predict that will happen.”

This time he caved, and asked the question she intended him to ask. “And why not?”

“Because we are going to inject you with a tracking device.”

“It is not ideal,” Jones said, incorrectly reading into his blank expression. “And the pay I will offer you is not your usual fee. But you will take it, or you will spend the rest of your life locked away in a prison where no one will know to look for you.”

“If SCORPIA finds out that I am alive, and working for you, even under duress, I will be killed.”

“Mr. Gregorovich, from what you know from the file I gave you, there is very little left of SCORPIA. The few individuals that remain with them would not find it worth the expenditure to chase you, I wager.”

“Other organizations would be similarly displeased that I had switched allegiances.”

“It’s a risk,” she agreed. “One that we will navigate together. But the offer stands. Take the deal, or die alone in a cell. Perhaps of boredom.”

He had already decided that he would agree. Yassen had decided he would agree even before he knew the deal. The rest was negotiating terms.

“How long do I have to think it over?” he asked.

“You will be here the rest of the day. I have the contract for you to look over when you’re ready. If you’re ready to sign, let me know.”

“I’ll see the contract.”

“The terms are negotiable,” she said, “but not by much. Your first assignments are mostly fixed, although there is one I'm still considering.”

“And they would be?” he asked.

She sucked on her mint a moment, studying him. “How would you like to train Alex Rider?”

\--

Alex hadn’t signed a contract agreeing to work for MI6, and he certainly didn’t owe them his life. So why was it that every time he was beginning to enjoy his life, Crawley or some other sinisterly boring apparition appear to fetch him back to the Royal and General, first to Mr. Blunt, and now to Mrs. Jones?

“I was at football practice!” he said, the moment he entered Mrs. Jones’ office. “I was finally being normal. You told me that I could say no, the next time you asked. Well, here’s my answer: no.”

“Take a seat,” she responded, unruffled.

Alex didn’t.

Mrs. Jones pursed her lips and examined him from behind her desk. “How’s Jack?”

“Unhappy, since I’m here.”

“I’m sure. Well, we can keep this brief then. I did say I would ask you the next time I offered you a mission, but I’m not doing that this time, Alex. This is an offer of a different sort.”

“Is it an offer for you to leave me alone?” Alex asked, hopefully.

“It can be if you want to be. But I’m not sure that you do. Sit.”

With a scowl, Alex did.

Mrs. Jones did not waste time getting to her offer. “I know you aren’t currently employed by MI6, Alex. But I hope one day you will consider the offer. Even if you don’t take our offer, though, what I am offering will help you know how to defend yourself. There are a lot of people who want to kill you, and I have to admit that this is due to your work for us.”

“Thanks for the info. I couldn’t have guessed, with the sniper who tried to kill me outside of this building a few months ago, as well as everything else.”

She ignored his sarcasm. “I’m offering to have you trained, Alex.”

It took a moment for the words to sink in, and she continued, as he thought the offer over. “It would be after school, and on weekends. I think it would be helpful, and you won't need to miss any more classes.”

“Helpful," he echoed.

“Yes. These are skills that would serve you well in life, I think. They’ll keep you safe. And I must admit that I hope, after a few weeks, that you’ll agree to use these skills to keep Britain safe.”

“What if I don’t?”

“Then after a few weeks, the training will end. If you agree, then the training will continue after school. It is a good deal, Alex.”

There was something she wasn’t telling him.

“Why now?”

She smiled. There was something uncertain in the gesture. “MI6 doesn’t have a training program for teenagers. I’m sure you can imagine why. But certain recent events have insured, and you have proven, that a trained teenage agent would be quite helpful to the national security of the nation. Recently, MI6 acquired the employment of a man who is prepared to teach you the skills I would prefer you to have.”

The kind of man who was prepared to train a teenage spy was probably a bloody psychopath.

“You know him,” she said.

“Oh, is Crawley secretly a drill sergeant for teenagers?”

She grimaced. “No. I’m afraid our newest acquisition comes, actually, from a rather different background than the rest of our agents. But I can assure you, he has your best interests at heart. He actually signed our employment contract only after we added a clause that we would offer you training, even if you didn’t end up using those services with us.”

Alex was sure that his expression conveyed clear bewilderment. “What do you mean?”

“I mean that he was prepared to refuse our offer of employment if you weren’t trained. I mentioned it as a possibility, you must know, and he decided it would be one of the more important clauses in his contract.”

Alex didn’t know that many people in MI6. Not many people that were still alive or employed. Not many that had only recently signed a contract, or who had come from a ‘non-traditional background’.

“Who are you talking about?”

Mrs. Jones’ smile by now was obviously awkward and forced. “I believe we told you he was dead. Please know, we only said it for your own benefit.”

Memories lit up in his head. Ian Rider, shot. Damien Cray, dead. And Yassen Gregorovich, dying, blood seeping from a hole in his chest. _I loved him...Go to Venice and you will find your destiny._

“You’re insane,” Alex said.

“I’m rather afraid that I’m not.” Her smile faded. “Yassen Gregorovich is alive. He is doing well. Much better than anyone, including the doctors, expected. And he’s prepared to train you - if you accept.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Huge thanks to WishUponADragon for beta reading this chapter for me. Thank you!

“You can’t trust him.” Yassen had killed Ian. He’d worked for SCORPIA for years, and with madmen like Sayle and Cray. Had Mrs. Jones forgotten that all?

“I don’t trust anyone,” Mrs. Jones responded. “But in offering him a deal that I can work with, I gain access to intelligence and manpower. He can tell us secrets about SCORPIA that can help us eliminate the last vestiges of threat the organization represents.” She took in his expression. “I have fail-safes in place, Alex. Gregorovich had a tracking device implanted yesterday. And for the moment, he is accompanied by a guard, both inside the Royal and General and outside of it.”

Alex was unconvinced. “You’re saying soon you’ll be down another agent. Yassen will have killed whoever’s guarding him and fled.” He didn’t care what Mrs. Jones said about having a tracking device implanted in Yassen – the man would fix that. He’d find a way to remove it, and it would be gone.

“I don’t think so.”

“You’ve been wrong before.”

She nodded. “Yes. I have. If I am wrong this time, then I will deal with the consequences. But, for more reasons than those I am willing to disclose to you at this time, I am reasonably certain that for now, he isn’t a threat to MI6.”

“What about a threat to me?” Yassen had made offering to train Alex a part of the deal he had signed, according to her. Was Alex the only one who had considered that it was just a way to get close to Alex and kill him? “I mean, does he know what I’ve done? He was the one who sent me to SCORPIA. I don’t think everything that happened afterwards went according to plan.”

“I’ve made him aware of SCORPIA’s downfall, yes. He knows your part in it.”

“And he knows my dad worked for you?” Alex pressed.

“Yes.”

Alex made up his mind. He wasn’t sure he trusted Mrs. Jones’ assessment of the situation; it would be better if he had more information of his own. “I want to talk to him.”

“Today?”

“Is that an option?”

Mrs. Jones stood and walked to the door to her office. She stepped into the room outside for a moment. Alex heard low words exchanged with her secretary. When Mrs. Jones returned to her desk, the same calm and implacable look on her face, Alex could barely restrain himself from pushing for an answer immediately.

She surveyed him for a moment, as if deciding whether he was ready to meet Yassen. The impatience written across his face must have been an acceptable emotion because her answer, when it came, was only, “Yes.”

“Alright. Where is he?”

“I have an intern coming to walk you to where he’s working. Do you know already whether you’re agreeing to our offer of training?”

“No.” It depended on whether Yassen seemed to be offering training just to snap Alex’s neck. It also depended on whether Alex could stand to spend more than a few minutes around the hired killer.

The intern walked Alex down the hallway to the lifts. They went down four floors, and then turned a corner in a nearly cramped hall, until they ended up outside a beige door with no number or adornments on the outside.

“I’ll wait here,” the intern said.

“Fine.” Alex looked at the door, as if hoping it would turn invisible and he could look through it to see the man inside without being seen in return. When that didn’t happen, he turned the handle, opened the door, and stepped inside.

It was a small room, set up like an office. There were grey steel filing cabinets lining one wall, making the space even more cramped than it had been already. A similarly grey desk was shoved in between the other wall and the cabinets, with just enough room for a person to walk between them to sit behind the desk. There were no windows in the room, and two men were inside.

The brown-haired man sitting in one of the two chairs in front of the desk turned around. He was a tanned man in a business suit – probably the guard mentioned by Mrs. Jones.

The man behind the desk was already looking at the doorway, ignoring the half-filled in form he looked to be working on.

“Alex,” Yassen Gregorovich said, without expression.

Until that moment, Alex hadn’t believed, not truly, that the man was alive. He couldn’t express why, but some part of him must have thought that Mrs. Jones was mistaken. Or – it had happened before – was lying to him.

“You’re supposed to be dead.”

His response wasn’t polite, he knew. But no part of Yassen and Alex’s relationship was predicated on politeness.

And Yassen had been dead! At least in Alex’s mind, the Russian had been safely a part of the past. Someone interesting who had affected his life, and who he’d thought – after Air Force One – that he had some sort of an odd connection with. It was easier to put aside the wrongs a person had done and consider them interesting, though, when they weren’t around anymore to continue doing harm to others.

“I’m not.”

Alex closed the door behind him. Firmly. There was no reason for anyone else to hear this conversation than needed to hear it. And now he was in a confined space with a man who killed others – often and easily – with only one MI6 agent separating them.

He stood by the door, looking at Yassen, uncertain as what to say next. Probably it was best to start with the basics: confirm what the man knew.

“My dad didn’t work for SCORPIA.”

It wasn’t a question, but Yassen’s response would surely give away if this was new information.

Yassen only looked at him.

“You sent me to SCORPIA.”

“I did.”

“Why?”

“They seemed a better choice than MI6, at the time.”

Alex didn’t miss the end of that sentence. “Now they don’t?”

“As you mentioned, John did not work for them. That may have led to complications.”

May have? Yassen had a gift for understatement, if the man knew even half of what had happened post-his ‘death’. “They tried to kill me.”

“Which time?” Yassen asked.

“Do you want a list?” Alex asked, his voice hard. “You sent me there, and they tried to kill me, and now you’re saying you want to help me. I don’t have any reason to trust you.” Let alone any reason to trust Yassen close enough to him to help him train.

“Then don’t. Trust that I don’t want to end up back in prison, which is where I will be if I hurt you.”

“That’s all you want to say,” Alex said, making the question a dry statement. “Don’t trust you, just trust you won’t hurt me? Why do you have a guard if you’re so harmless?” And why did Yassen need a guard if he had a tracking device implanted in him?

Yassen’s clear blue eyes stared through him. “Would you like me to say something else?”

“I want to know why you offered to train me, when I’m not who you thought I was. And I haven’t agreed to be trained, to be clear. By anyone, let alone you.”

“You don’t have to agree.”

“That sounds like a threat.”

“No. It is just a reminder that you are being offered a choice of training. It is a choice you may refuse.”

“You’re not giving me any reasons not to refuse,” Alex pointed out.

Yassen shrugged. “What reasons would you like?”

“I don’t know.”

The guard in front of the desk glanced between Alex and Yassen, as if unsure of what was happening, but positive that he needed to be on the alert.

“You haven’t been trained,” Yassen said, slowly. “There are many people who would like you dead. Training could help prevent that future. It is possible that you will work for MI6 again, and as of yet they have not seen fit to train you. If you refuse this offer, I don’t know that the same offer will be presented to you again. Training now could prepare you for future situations you may end up in.”

“I’ve been trained.”

“No, you haven’t. I’ve read your file. You spent two weeks learning skills so basic that Malagosto does not cover most of them in classes, and doing exercise that you would likely not need for intelligence work. You spent a few weeks with SCORPIA learning rudimentary skills, but that was not enough time by far, and not training provided by MI6.”

_Ian trained me._

“So, you want to give me a gun and teach me to shoot people?” Alex asked, bitter. “Are you sure _you_ trust _me_?” Surely Yassen hadn’t forgotten the time Alex had pointed a gun at his head.

“If we have the chance to spend much time with guns, it would be after significant training without. And yes, I do.”

“I don’t want a gun.”

“Then we can train without them.”

There was something in Yassen’s voice that suggested that training without involving guns was not his preference, but Alex didn’t particularly care.

As Alex stared, Yassen put down the pen that he’d been holding. “Why do you want to train me?” Alex asked, after a long pause. He had, probably, already decided to say no to the offer. There was no reason giving MI6 more ammunition to use against him. But perhaps he would change his mind. “Is it just because my dad trained you?”

“No.”

Alex waited.

Yassen, for a fleeting moment, may have had regret on his face. “I sent you to them. It was a mistake. You would not have been shot if I hadn’t sent you there. Certainly, you would have fewer enemies.”

“And what? This is your way to make it up to me?”

“Perhaps in part.”

“Then what’s the other part? Don’t tell me it’s due to ‘kindness’.”

“Not that, no. Perhaps there is a part of me that wants to teach you what your father taught me, although it is not my main motivation. Perhaps it is just that you could use the training, and training you will delay your boss in giving me other ways that I can be of use. But I assure you, none of my motivations rely on hurting you, or putting you in any danger.”

“Do you want to tell me about my dad?”

Yassen frowned at that. “Did you want to hear about John?”

“Not from you.”

The words were an impulse, and Alex knew at once he hadn’t meant them. He had heard about his father from people who were at least as bad as Yassen in the past – from Ash, and Rothman, although both were questionable sources in retrospect.

“I won’t mention him, if it’s what you prefer.”

Some part of Alex must have, finally, accepted that this was reality. Yassen was alive. He was at least playing along momentarily with this farce of a deal from MI6. Alex wasn’t sure when it became real, as it still didn’t feel real, but the questions in his head were now far more practical than the ones that had occupied the space a moment ago. The unasked question of ‘how did you survive’ had morphed into the question of ‘if you aren’t going to make me work with guns, then what’?

He decided to ask that question. He hadn’t decided to accept the training. Yet he should have an idea of what he was refusing before he did it.

“What do you want to teach me?”

“You have some experience with hand-to-hand combat, and disarming an opponent. I would like you to learn more. It would also be useful if you were better at deception.”

“I know how to lie to someone.”

“Not well, in my experience.”

Alex flushed. He hadn’t come here to be insulted. “You don’t know that.”

“You’re young,” Yassen said, as if Alex was overlooking the obvious. “You shouldn’t compare yourself to a seasoned agent.”

“Why would I?,” Alex responded. “I’m untrained, can’t defend myself, and can’t lie. _Obviously so,_ apparently. It’s a miracle I’m still alive, I’m sure. And now you’re here, offering to make me a seasoned agent. I’m so lucky that you’ve been hidden away all this time waiting to finally offer me the chance to lie better.”

“I have been in prison. I’m here now, offering to help. And yes, Alex. You are, as you say, obviously untrained. It’s not just luck that has helped you survive so long, but don’t ignore that luck has played a large part.”

Yassen wasn’t the first person to say this, but it dug a barb into him. After all, Yassen had seen Alex in action. If he said Alex was obviously untrained, he was probably telling the truth.

Why did it sting, though? It wasn’t as if Alex was hoping to impress the man.

“You should still be in prison. You’ve killed people.”

Yassen shrugged. “That is not your decision to make, but you can offer that wisdom to your bosses if you wish.”

“I will.” Alex turned, and opened the door.

“You’re saying no to training, I gather?” Yassen asked, behind him.

Alex didn’t know.

The intern was still in the hall outside. “Can you take me to the exit?” Alex asked, ignoring Yassen’s question, as he closed the door behind him.

The intern gazed at him uncertainly. “Do you need to meet with anyone else?”

“I need to go home.”

Jack would be waiting with dinner by now. And knowing Mrs. Jones, she hadn’t taken the time to phone Jack and say she’d be picking Alex up.

The intern, uncertainly, led him back to the lift and then down to the exit. “Tell your boss I’ll call her,” Alex said before he left. “And if she calls me before I contact her, my answer will be no.”

Dinner that night was forced. Jack knew he’d left football practice in an unmarked black sedan – Tom had called ahead to warn her. She thought he’d been offered another mission. In a way, Alex supposed he had: the mission of keeping Yassen occupied from thoughts of escape.

Alex, for his part, wasn’t sure what to tell Jack. He hadn’t been offered another mission, but he had been offered a leadup to a job with MI6. Mrs. Jones had told him directly that she hoped he would train and then use his skills to help the agency. And Yassen was alive, but Jack barely knew who he was. Back when this had begun, when Ian had been killed, Alex wasn’t used to telling Jack anything about his missions. He’d never told her about Ian’s killer at the time, or seeing Yassen in Cornwall, or being saved by him on the tower. Jack had heard that Alex tried to kill the man who’d hurt the Pleasures in France, but there had been a lot of details left out of Alex’s version to Jack after everything with Cray finished. Jack didn’t know he was the one who had sent him to SCORPIA.

Finally, he settled with the easiest version of the truth. “It wasn’t for a mission. Mrs. Jones offered me training. Self-defense practice, and things like that.”

Jack wasn’t a fool. “Why would she offer that now? Is it for a mission in the future?”

“Not a particular one. At least, not that she told me.”

“Oh, Alex,” she sighed.

“I know.” And he did. He and Jack both knew that where MI6 was involved, there was always a mission.

She didn’t force her opinion on the training onto him. And Alex could have thanked her for it. All she asked was, “Are you going to accept it?”

“I don’t know.” And right then, he didn’t know.

By the end of the next day, he did.

He’d thought it over all day. It was a source of distraction all day, and by lunch Tom had noticed something was wrong. “You all right?” Tom asked as he spooned into his school pudding. “You haven’t been here all day.”

“Yeah,” Alex said, trying to offer a half smile. “Mind if I ask you something?”

“Go for it.”

“If someone offered you top secret agent training, would you take it?”

“Definitely. Why even question it? Getting trained to be the next James Bond? That’s great, man, I’m definitely down. All I need to do is make sure I have a signature drink ready to go. Martinis are old news.”

“Yeah, definitely. But what if,” Alex hesitated for a second, “what if the person offering the training was basically evil?”

“What, top secret training from a leader of the Evil League of Evil? Hell yeah. Double hell yeah. They’d probably know all the cool ways to kill someone that the good guys wouldn’t tell you.”

That was exactly the problem. “Tom,” Alex said.

“What?” And then Tom saw Alex’s worried face. “Shit. This is real, isn’t it?”

“Kind of.”

“Alright. Let me think.” Tom stared out across the lawn for a bit while Alex tastelessly ate the vegetables of the day. “Ok. So pretend you’re Peter Parker, right?”

“You don’t even like Spiderman.”

“Yeah, ‘cause he’s the worst. Deadpool’s where it’s at. But it works, right? Peter Parker goes to school at day, and has his top-secret hidden identity as a superhero at night. Except sometimes you miss school for yours, but it’s basically the same. Now say Peter Parker gets offered training by Lex Luther or something.”

“Lex Luther’s from Superman.”

“Doesn’t matter. Evil League of Evil guy offers to train him. And Peter Parker’s got, I don’t know, spider senses or whatever, but he’s still just a kid. He isn’t that trained, you know? Peter Parker should take the advice unless he think’s it a secret mission to kill him. But really the question is, what do the Avengers think? They’re the ultimate good guys, and I’m pretty sure Peter Parker works for them as Spiderman. Is Iron Man going to be pissed that the Evil League of Evil is offering Spiderman better training than he ever did?”

It made sense, in as much as Tom ever did. Except, as Alex pointed out, “In this case the Avengers are sponsoring the Evil League of Evil dude who’s offering the training.”

“Shit. Really?” Tom’s eyes widened. “Is this one of the times that the Avengers are being run by the bad guys from Captain America?”

“I don’t think so. I think the Avengers are just idiots.”

“Then say no. Because we all know the bad guy is just going to kill Spiderman the first chance he gets. Or poison him with spider poison or whatever.”

Alex frowned. “What if Peter Parker’s dad taught the bad guy how to be a bad guy? And the bad guy might not kill Peter Parker because of that?”

Tom stared.

Alex, trying to suppress his frown, grimaced.

“Your life is too fucked up for a comic book, you know that, right?”

“I’m starting to get that idea.”

The bell for next period rang inside the school and could be heard faintly on the lawn. Alex and Tom started to stand and gather their trays to head back inside.

“I don’t know, Alex. But I hope you figure it out,” Tom offered as they split for separate language classes from the now nearly empty cafeteria.

It was only after school, when playing a loose match of football at the park near school with Tom and a group of guys that Alex barely knew, that Alex decided. Ultimately, it was the smallest of occurrences that led to his decision. Sam, one of the guys he was playing against, was picked up from the park by his dad. Sam’s dad was apparently a teacher at the nearby primary school, and he stopped by the field they were on and waved for his attention. “Sam,” Sam’s dad called. Sam, smiling, waved bye to them all and ran to grab his backpack on the sidelines. And Alex felt a pang as he realized that he would never have that exact moment again, not quite, not with Ian dead. He’d never had that moment with his dad.

It should have made him determined to avoid Yassen. Yassen had killed Ian, after all.

He was also the last real connection to Alex’s dad that Alex had left. Ian and Ash were dead. Mrs. Jones mainly knew his dad as a patriot.

And Alex’s dad had trained Yassen. Whatever reason Yassen claimed, and whatever his real reason, he was offering advice that might have been from Alex’s dad.

“I’ll do it,” Alex said that evening, after homework, when he called the bank. Mrs. Jones was still there, and his call had been transferred to her with no problems. “But only on one condition.”

“What condition?”

“If I want to leave, I can leave. At any point. And he can’t contact me again, and you won’t ask me to return or see him again. Ever. If I decide I’m done, I want contact cut completely.”

“That’s more than fair.”

“I’m serious,” Alex warned. “If I leave training and you mention him again, I’ll never talk to you again. And if you try to pick me up from football practice after that in another car that looks straight from the worst spy movies, I’ll start slashing tires.”

“Agreed.”

“And it won’t interfere with schoolwork.”

“No.”

“Fine.” Alex glanced at Jack over the counter, as she haphazardly cleaned up the kitchen mess of the past few days. “When do I start?”

\--

Alex would say yes, Yassen thought, as he reflected on the conversation from earlier that day while filling in the endless stream of paperwork with information on what he knew of SCORPIA’s networks. It was the smart choice, from all Yassen knew of the boy and his life. He was a walking trap for danger. Danger was attracted to him the same way sailors were attracted to Sirens, even if it left sailors steering straight into a coming storm. And if you were a walking trap for danger, why ignore the offer of self-defense training?

It was possible Alex would refuse, of course. A slim possibility, but one that he should be prepared for.

Mrs. Jones had offered training Alex as if it were a certainty and not a possibility. What would she throw at the boy to get him to accept in the case that he did refuse? The offer to learn more about John Rider? The reality of the dangers he faced, just by living his life with the name Alex Rider?

Alex might think he had a choice in accepting the offer of training. Yassen may have spoken to Alex as if he had a choice. But if Jones was put into an interrogation chamber with the same methods applied to her as had been applied to Yassen, how long would she resist admitting that Alex had no choice at all?

MI6 was determined to get every chance to use Alex that they could before he was inevitably killed. Yassen would offer the opportunities to train before he managed to make his exit, because it was the least that he could do for the child. It may not prolong Alex’s life by much, but Yassen could be assured that he had done _something._

It was a shame it had come to this. Yassen had meant his words the first time he’d met Alex. This was not the life meant for a child. By this point, however, it was the life that Alex possessed.

Inevitably, his thoughts drifted to other matters than Alex Rider – to thoughts of his escape. Leaving MI6 would be complicated by the guard, but not by much. The largest complication by far was the chip injected in his arm. He wasn’t sure how to deal with that one yet. His first hope had been that he could escape before the tracking device was brought out, but Jones had insured that he had the microscopic device implanted before he was ever allowed out of handcuffs. Now he was slightly freer in movement, but he had a much larger problem.

His goal was to be gone within the year. The sooner, the better. First, though, he would need to learn more about the microchip. Once he knew how to disable it, he could finalize his plans.

And if he could find a way to take Jones out when he left, all the better.


	3. Chapter 3

The apartment in North London was small, and sparsely furnished. Which made sense, since from Alex had been told, MI6 hosted the apartment, and Yassen was it’s current resident.

Alex watched, warily, as Yassen finished making himself a cup of tea. He’d offered Alex one, but Alex wasn’t an idiot. He wasn’t going to accept a drink from Yassen, even if he watched the entire process of making the tea.

Admittedly, the guard in the corner of the room was probably some form of deterrent against Yassen poisoning Alex, but it was better to be safe than to be sorry.

“Mrs. Jones mentioned a tracking device,” Alex said, the moment Yassen sat down at the table across from him.

Yassen placed his tea down carefully, then looked across the table at him. His expression was difficult to read. “Yes.” 

“When does that happen?”

“It already has.”

“So what, you have an ankle bracelet?” Alex asked, raising an eyebrow none-too-politely.

“No.” Yassen didn’t expand his answer.

“Then why do you have a guard?”

Yassen shrugged. “Perhaps you should ask him.”

That was probably not an actual direction, but Alex didn’t care. He turned to the guard. “Why are you here, if he’s got some kind of tracker on him?”

The guard stared back at him impassively.

Fine. If the guard was determined that he wouldn’t be any more help than Yassen, Alex could work with what he knew: there was a tracking device and a guard, as well as, undoubtedly, security cameras around the apartment. He was probably – _probably_ – safe enough.

“I want to know how you want to train me. We’re starting tomorrow after school, right?”

“Yes.” Yassen tilted his head, considering him. “Is there a place you want to start?”

Yes. No. Did it really matter? Yassen didn’t seem the sort of man to build a training routine out of what Alex wanted. All the same, if he had been asked, Alex would answer.

“You said I didn’t know how to lie. Teach me.”

Yassen frowned slightly. “I said you lied poorly, not that you don’t know how to lie. I fully believe that you are capable of telling a lie, even one that may fool someone who is not me.”

“I want to know how to lie to someone like you.”

Or, honestly, just to lie to Yassen. Alex had no intention of letting the man read him easily.

“That will come later.”

“If I spend more than a day letting you train me.”

“Yes, little Alex. If that.”

_Little Alex._

Alex grimaced. Yassen didn’t get to pretend to know him. And yet, the man had, from the very beginning. From the time they’d met on Sayle’s rooftop to the time they’d seen each other in France – when Alex had lifted a gun to Yassen’s head and the man had only calmly talked him out of putting a bullet into it – to now, Yassen always spoke as if he had some insight into what Alex was thinking.

Changing topics, Alex asked his own question. “Fine, then. Lying lessons come later. What do you want to teach me first?”

“We will start, tomorrow, with you showing me what you already know.”

That was simple enough. He knew almost nothing. Two weeks of SAS training for endurance, one RTI exercise that Alex had almost sidestepped, and a half month at Malagosto didn’t make him a true agent, not that Mr. Blunt or Mrs. Jones had ever seemed to care.

“That won’t take long,” Alex dismissed.

Yassen shrugged. “You may be surprised.”

“Fine.” Alex stared, hard, at the cup of tea resting on the table. “I’ll show you what I know after school tomorrow. What about after that?”

“That depends on what you know.”

“I told Mrs. Jones that if I walked away, I never have to hear from you again.”

Yassen could have been unsurprised, but since his expression never faltered, perhaps he was secretly shocked. Although Alex doubted it.

“I mean it,” Alex added.

“Alright,” Yassen agreed. “If you walk away, you will never hear from me again.”

“Where are we meeting?” A dubious glance around the small apartment showed that it wasn’t nearly big enough for more than the most constrained of hand to hand combat, if that was what Yassen had planned.

“We will start at MI6, but some days we will be here. The Piccadilly line goes almost exactly from your house in Chelsea to here.”

Alex froze. Yassen knew where he lived.

_He knew where Alex lived._

“You know where I live,” Alex said, once the shock had nearly subsided to a low panic.

“Yes.”

“ _Why_ do you know where I live?”

“At first, because of Ian Rider.” A better man would have looked ashamed.

“At first.” As if that wasn’t terrible enough on its own – as if killing the man who had raised him, no matter how selfish Ian’s own purposes might have been, wasn’t beyond egregious.

“Yes. And then you became a problem in your own right.”

His hands, almost unconsciously, formed fists. “I wasn’t a problem. You were evil. The people you worked for were evil. I was doing the right thing.”

“To the people I worked for, you were a problem,” Yassen corrected. “I’m not here to debate the morality involved.”

He shoved his chair back and stood up, abruptly. They hadn’t officially said they were done talking, but it didn’t matter. _Alex_ was done talking.

“Tomorrow at the Royal and General, then?” he asked, his voice cold.

Yassen nodded. “Be there by three.”

“Fine.”

Alex slammed the door on his way out.

\--

“I’m doing it,” Alex told Tom the next day at lunch.

“Doing what?” Tom asked absentmindedly, as he quickly tried to cram hours of studying into one lunch break.

“Letting the bad guy teach me,” Alex said.

“That’s nice,” Tom muttered. And then Alex’s words caught up to him, and he looked up in surprise, dropping his textbook as he did so.

After muttering a string of none-too-polite curses under his breath, Tom stopped, took a breath, and asked, “Are you sure?”

“No.” Not at all. “But I can leave whenever I want.”

“That’s what they all say,” Tom replied, knowingly. “They always tell the good guy that he can walk away, but they never can. Plus, haven’t they told you that before?”

Yeah. A million times.

“I really will walk away, though,” Alex said.

Tom, frowning, bent down to pick his textbook back up. “Yeah, sure you will.” He didn’t sound convinced. “Hey,” he said, his eyes widening with an afterthought. “When you get killed trying to stop the inevitable evil plot that this bad guy is secretly working on, can I get your Xbox?”

\--

The walls of the room located in the second floor of the Royal and General were a dull grey, and the fluorescent lights above were annoyingly bright. Except for the two chairs on the side of the room, a closed closet door next to the chairs, and the blue mats on the ground of the back half of the floor, the room was bare.

The guard that had been with Yassen each of the times Alex had seen Yassen was sitting on one of the chairs. 

Yassen was standing on the back mat. He was holding a gun.

A fake, bright orange rubber gun, but still the image of a gun.

Alex stepped into the room and stopped.

“You’re late,” Yassen said.

Alex glanced at his watch. It was three minutes after three. He shrugged. He was here at all, and Yassen could either roll with it or send him packing. Alex wouldn’t complain either way.

“Leave your bag on the wall.”

Alex shrugged his backpack onto the second chair by the guard, then turned to Yassen. “What now?”

Yassen gestured him over. Reluctantly, Alex approached.

“Step in front of me,” Yassen instructed. “Now turn around.”

Leaving his back to Yassen was the last thing he wanted. Still, he had agreed to this. He might as well try.

If he died in a training room at MI6, he wouldn’t even claim to be surprised. In fact, it would make a fitting sort of ironic sense.

Something bumped the back of Alex’s head. Alex reached back, and felt the rubber gun pointed at his head.

“Show me how you have been taught to fight back to this,” Yassen instructed.

An hour later, and Alex had shown Yassen perhaps a hundred ways that he would react if someone approached him with a gun from any direction. Yassen hadn’t found back to any of Alex’s offenses; in fact, he’d gone along with them as if he had no training himself.

“That’s it,” Alex said, after he’d disarmed Yassen yet again. “I don’t know any other methods of disarming someone.”

Yassen nodded. “Those methods were almost all taught to you at Malagosto.”

“Yeah.” Alex glared. “So?”

“Did you they teach you how to respond if someone fights back?”

“A bit.”

“Show me.” Again, Yassen raised the rubber gun at Alex’s head, and again Alex reacted offensively, reaching out to sweep the gun hand in another direction so the gun wasn’t pointed at him.

This time, Yassen did not go along with it.

A second later Alex was on the floor, with a gun pointed at his head, and Yassen kneeling on his stomach. “You’re dead,” Yassen said, pointlessly, as if Alex didn’t know that the position was hopeless.

Yassen stood up, and waited for Alex to scramble to his feet. “Again,” he said, walking around to aim the gun at Alex from a different position.

The next hour was a repeat of the first, but worse. Yassen wasn’t cruel – when he threw Alex to the ground, he seemed to take care to make sure Alex didn’t land in a way that would hurt him. He wasn’t grabbing at Alex in a way that would leave bruises. Yet, again and again, Alex was knocked to the floor or against a wall, or held in a way that he couldn’t fight back, and each time Yassen pronounced him dead.

“Fine,” Alex snarled, after what felt an impossibly long hour of Yassen showing off. “You’re better than a fifteen year old, especially when you start off with the gun. Anything else you want to prove?”

“Do you think you would do better if you started with the gun?” Yassen asked.

“Whoever starts with the gun has the advantage,” Alex pointed out.

“Perhaps. Not always, I would wager, when the person holding the gun is untrained and in close quarters with someone who can fight back. And then sometimes the person with the gun is young, and scared, and has no intention of actually pulling the trigger.”

“Try me.”

Yassen tossed the gun to Alex.

Without hesitating, Alex took a step forward, and raised it to Yassen’s head. “You’re de-“ he started to say.

And then he no longer had the gun, and Yassen pressed it against his head. “Goodbye, Alex.”

_Yassen was a fucking psychopath._

Thinking those words didn’t help slow his frantic heartrate.

“I want to try again,” Alex said, after he took a shaking breath, and the beating of his heart calmed. “I wasn’t ready.”

“No,” Yassen said. “That’s enough of this for now.”

“It’s not!” Alex could beat him. Could show Yassen that he wasn’t totally incompetent, not if he started with the advantage.

Yassen threw the plastic gun onto the floor in the far corner. “I want to how well you fare in hand to hand combat now. Without a weapon.”

Against Yassen? The answer would be ‘poorly’. And doubtless Yassen knew it, too.

Alex did fare poorly.

Yassen could not have appeared less surprised if he’d tried.

“Enough,” Alex snapped, this time after only twenty minutes of being knocked around and ending, each time, in a position that would prove all too easily fatal. “Are we done yet?”

“We can be.” Yassen stepped back. “You’re reckless with your punches, and you don’t have enough training. You could spend more time showing me that, but I doubt I’ll learn much else that is important.”

“All the more reason to give up on training me.”

“No,” Yassen disagreed. “You aren’t hopeless. Your stances could be improved, but you clearly have a foundation of knowledge to work upon. You easily have the experience of many in their twenties. If you start training now, and continue, you will grow to be competent.”

“Maybe I don’t want to be competent.”

“Then it will be easier for them to kill you the next time you are in the field.”

“I haven’t agreed to work for them again,” Alex pointed out.

“Jones mentioned that.”

“Did she tell you she’s only giving me a few weeks of training if I don’t agree to join them?”

“Yes.”

Alex frowned. “And?”

“And what?”

“Do you think that you can train me in a few weeks?”

“I can make you better in a few weeks,” Yassen said.

“Or you could kill me.”

“That isn’t a danger.”

Alex glanced at the guard, who was watching them carefully, his expression guarded. “Hey!”

The guard’s eyes snapped to Alex’s own.

“What happens if he kills me?” Alex asked.

Momentarily snapped out of his neutral expression, the guard stammered, “That isn’t – that won’t happen.”

“But what if it does?” Alex pressed. “Does he go back to jail? Are they going to kill him? I want to know that you’re all thinking of keeping me safe.”

“Perhaps this is enough for today,” Yassen said. “Go home. Practice your stances if you have time. Be here tomorrow at the same time.”

“When I go home, I’m doing my homework,” Alex refuted.

“If you like.”

“I do,” Alex said. It sounded petty out loud – as if he were a kid determined to get the final word in. Yassen may have been thinking the same. Glowering, Alex went to grab his backpack and head home.

\--

“How was it?” Jack asked during a commercial break in the tv show they were watching.

Alex chewed a bite of pizza, thinking over what to say. What was the right word to describe continuously getting knocked off your feet and told you were dead by someone who regularly killed people as part of their job description?

“It was alright,” he settled on.

He wasn’t sure why he was keeping the truth of everything from Jack. Partially, he knew, he didn’t want her to panic. And if she knew everything – including that Yassen apparently knew where they lived – Jack would be incredibly panicked.

The truth was complicated, Alex decided. And he was trying his hardest to keep things simple. And that included separating his life with MI6 from his life at home.

“Are you going back tomorrow?”

Alex shrugged. He hadn’t made up his mind for sure, although he was fairly certain he would be.

Yassen knew too much to just ignore the opportunity. He knew Alex’s dad. He knew how to protect oneself. He’d survived in this life for over a decade and was still alive to teach what he knew, unlike so many people – Ian included – that Alex had known or met.

“Well,” Jack said, “Remember that you can stop at any point. I promise that I’ll support you, no matter what you choose.”

Alex grabbed another slice of pizza. “I know. And thanks.” Jack might not know everything, but at least she was there. That was enough for now.

\--

Every day after school that week, Alex headed to the Royal and General as soon as school was out.

For that first week, Yassen ran Alex through a series of exercises on self-defense. They were grueling, tiring, and left him with bruises, but they did feel like progress.

Alex couldn’t honestly say why he returned each day. Yassen and him barely spoke, except for Yassen giving directions and feedback and Alex responding to each direction in turn.

Yassen wasn’t, as teachers went, an awful instructor. He was regimented and fixed on his own goals, but he didn’t raise his voice or reprimand Alex when he made mistakes.

He also didn’t compliment Alex beyond small nods of approval when he fixed his stances or the occasional word affirming that Alex was following his directions to the letter.

Good.

Learning from someone that John Rider had trained was one thing; hearing a compliment from Ian Rider’s killer was another entirely. (Except, as he wondered late at night when he struggled to fall asleep despite his exhaustion, were the two things truly so different?)

And so the week went, with school in the morning and early afternoon, Tom giving him worried and apprehensive looks at lunch, Yassen training him directly after school, and homework and dinner before bed. Alex gave his coach a signed note saying he had physical therapy after school for the next few weeks and would miss a few football practices. And although the coach had sighed the sigh of one with a long-suffering ailment when he’d received Alex’s note, he’d agreed that if Alex practiced with the team on Saturdays and made it to their games, it could be worked out.

Which is why when Yassen dismissed him Friday afternoon with instructions to be back at the Royal and General at seven in the morning the next day, Alex refused. “I can’t.”

Yassen raised an eyebrow. “Why can’t you?”

“I have football practice at nine. I can come later if you want – at three, like usual.”

Cool blue eyes gazed at him with disinterest. “I am training you to protect yourself from people that want to kill you. It is perhaps more important than a football game.”

“It’s not a game,” Alex pointed out. “It’s practice. But I’d rather do practice than be here, so take it or leave it.”

“I will be here at seven,” Yassen said. “Preferably, the entire day would be a day of practice in combat and tactical gear.”

“And I’ll be here after football practice,” Alex refuted. “Or maybe after lunch. One of those times.”

“When does practice end?”

“Eleven.”

“And where is your practice at?”

Alex set his jaw. Yassen didn’t get to know anything more about his life than he already knew. “Doesn’t matter.”

Yassen shrugged. “Then I’ll assume it is close to your house. You can be here at 7, and leave at 8:15 to get to practice. You will need to be back here by 11:45.”

“Or what?” Alex shot back.

“Or I have no more interest in training you. We have only a few weeks. Either this is a priority, or it isn’t, and I cannot help you anyway.”

“You’re threatening me.”

“No. I’m telling you my terms.”

It was a threat, regardless of what Yassen said about the matter. And Alex had no interest in working with someone who threatened him.

It was a rash decision, to decide to end this for such a small matter. A part of his brain absolutely knew that.

Whatever part of the brain was failing at regulating his anger told that much smaller part of the brain to shut up and get lost. Alex had been here for _hours_ every day after school, getting beaten up every day with no appreciation for the time he’d put into it. He’d agreed to work with _Yassen,_ a man who should be rotting in prison if he was even still alive. And now Yassen was trying to take away his chance to socialize with people and live a normal life on the weekends as well as after school?

“Keep your terms.” Alex grabbed his backpack from the floor. “Thanks for the training, I guess. I hope you enjoy prison, whenever you finally go back there.”

“I’ll be waiting here tomorrow,” Yassen replied, unruffled, as if Alex wasn’t ending things now.

“Whatever.”

It hadn’t even been nice while it lasted, Alex decided, on the tube home. It had barely been civil. Maybe Yassen had been pleasant enough, but the man didn’t have emotions.

Still, Alex hesitated that night to call Mrs. Jones and tell her that he was done with training. He couldn’t say why, but a voice of doubt was starting to whisper thoughts in his head.

He’d call Mrs. Jones tomorrow, he decided, as he went up to his room for bed. Or maybe Yassen could end it. Maybe that would be better. When seven in the morning came and went, and Alex wasn’t there, Yassen could tell Mrs. Jones that he was done training Alex, and this whole affair would be done with.

With the solution settled in his mind, he sat down to work on maths.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> AN: I may have inadvertently copied a scene from an earlier story I wrote, but the context would be different, and so I’m going to allow my inadvertent self-plagiarization.
> 
> Comments truly appreciated!


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